Last week I toured Edwards Air Force Base in California's Antelope Valley. In the base museum I saw an image of Muroc Station, aka Rod, Santa Fe's former depot in what is now the air base. I noticed quite a bit of trackage within the nearly 500 square mile base, although much of it look little used.

I did a little digging on the railroad history of the area and cobbled together the following information from several sources.

The Southern Pacific Railroad was first into the region in 1876 when it extended a line through the Antelope Valley toward Los Angeles. In 1882 additional tracks, which would ultimately become a part of the Santa Fe, were extended westward out of Barstow toward Mojave.

The Santa Fe's route from Barstow to Mojave brought the first semblance of civilization with the establishment of a water stop twenty miles southeast of Mojave at the edge of an immense dry lake. The water stop was known as Rod, and the lakebed was called Rodriguez Dry Lake, which by the 1900s was anglicized to Rogers.

At first the lake served only as a bed for the Santa Fe's rails and a small camp specializing in the extraction of drilling mud for use in oil wells. In 1910 came the first permanent settlers, Clifford and Effie Corum, and Clifford's brother, Ralph.

The Corums were determined to start a farm community in the midst of this desert wasteland and they somehow convinced other settlers to join them. The brothers opened a general store, dug wells for water, and held church services in their home. The Santa Fe's trains always stopped for water.

The Corums decided to name the little community after themselves. Here they ran into a snag. Postal authorities objected because California already had a Coram township and the similarity in spelling would surely cause confusion. The Corums then suggested Muroc, created by spelling their name backwards, but the Santa Fe objected because of an existing rail stop named Murdock. The railroad's suggested names were Dorado, Ophir, Yermo and Istar. The Corums remained firm. The tiny community became Muroc.

Under the U.S. Army the area became the Muroc Bombing and Gunnery Range in 1933 and Muroc Army Air Base in 1942. The then U.S. Air Force base was renamed Edwards Air Force Base in 1949.

A very interesting article on freight operations titled "Railways to Rockets" was written by former Santa Fe brakeman George Gilbert Lynch for the Bakersfield Magazine in 2010. Note his experience with Helium cars. Here is a link to that article.

[www.bakersfieldmagazine.net]

I'll have another post on the Helium cars shortly.

Bob Chaparro
Hemet, CA